On those rare moments when the traffic noises of busy Tilghman Street die down, my urban back yard is alive with the songs and chatter of birds.  Chickadees, sparrows, cardinals, catbirds, yellow finches, robins and mourning doves all find solace in the hedgerow between our houses and at the feeding station I share with my next door neighbor.  Birds are also welcome to eat any and all of the pest bugs in my vegetable garden as I don’t use any chemicals for either pest control or accelerated growth, preferring to remain organic.  The only thing I ask in return is don’t poop on my head.

My modest back yard is a delicate ecosystem where everything that happens there affects something else.  Our resident cardinals nest in the arborvitae and raise their young each spring.  Chipmunks skitter up the garage walls and eat the sunflower seeds that drop on the ground from the bird feeder.  Squirrels (aka Tree Rats) dig up flower bulbs and carry off the first tomatoes of the season.  Skunks come in at night, rooting about in the dirt for grubs.  A red-tailed hawk once took down a rabbit there and left nothing behind but two fuzzy ears.

I simply can’t imagine how empty and lifeless my garden would be without birdsong or the chirp of crickets, so my hat is off to Rachel Carson for her research and work in eradicating pesticide use in the United States.  Her words describing the dozens of dead birds left in the wake of DDT spraying are tragically poignant.  Biocides, she argues, rarely if ever affect only the target pests.  The chemicals used to treat Dutch elm disease not only killed the beetles that spread the disease but also leeched into the groundwater, making earthworms a potentially deadly snack for robins. “The robins, then, are only part of the chain of devastation linked to the spraying of the elms,” she writes.  “It is only reasonable to suppose that all birds and mammals heavily dependent on earthworms or other soil organisms for food are threatened by the robins’ fate.”

Just like in my garden, whatever we as humans do has a marked effect on the natural world around us.  The USDA’s Agricultural Research Service pooh-poohed her research that DDT caused a decline in the bird population, claiming it posed no threat to either humans or wildlife.  Chemical company representatives aggressively sought to discredit her.  And yet her writings about pesticide use and the detrimental effects it had on the surrounding environment would become the basis for the environmental movement of the 1960’s.  In Silent Spring, she documents a killing cycle that not only directly affects insect and animal life but also upsets the ecosystem by eradicating one species while opening the door for other invasive species to move in. “Who has made the decision that sets in motion these chains of poisonings, this ever-widening wave of death that spreads out, like ripples when a pebble is dropped into a still pond? “ she asks.  “The decision is that of the authoritarian temporarily entrusted with power; he has made it during a moment of inattention by millions to whom beauty and the ordered world of nature still have a meaning that is deep and imperative.”